Amazon Web Services on Thursday announced new High Memory EC2 instances designed to run large in-memory databases like SAP HANA. The instances currently deliver 6 TB, 9 TB, and 12 TB of memory, with 18 TB and 24 TB instances coming in 2019.

These High Memory instances enable customers to run in-memory databases in the same Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) as the rest of their enterprise applications. That means they can scale their in-memory database and easily connect it to storage, networking, analytics, IoT or machine learning services.

The deployment of in-memory databases is becoming more common as enterprises process more real-time data. AWS noted that the company Fast Retailing, known as the UNIQLO brand, has been running HANA on Amazon EC2 X1e instances with 4 TB memory. The retailer plans to transition to the new Amazon EC2 High Memory instance with 6 TB memory to support its fast-growing business.

"Our fast-paced industry requires data and analytics in real time, and we use SAP HANA database to support us," Fast Retailing CIO Makoto Hoketsu said in a statement.

Other cloud providers have also noted this trend. Earlier this year, Google said it was beefing up support for SAP HANA and other workloads on the Google Cloud Platform with Intel's upcoming Optane DC Persistent Memory.

Previous and related coverage:

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